Russia To Assist China In Developing Reactor

April 21, 1993|By Uli Schmetzer, Chicago Tribune.

BEIJING — Russia and China, which once threatened each other with nuclear devastation, will conduct joint research on the design of a more efficient nuclear reactor, the official New China news agency announced this week.

Under the agreement, Russia has pledged to send 10 scientists to China to work on a hybrid fusion-fission reactor for peaceful purposes, the agency said.

It is the first time Russian nuclear scientists will help the Chinese to develop nuclear power since the 1950s, when the former Soviet Union helped Mao Tse-tung's fledgling communist state with weapons research.

That honeymoon lasted only a few years. By the late '50s, Beijing and Moscow had fallen out over their interpretation of Marxism. Mao then ordered his nation to "dig tunnels and store grain" in preparation for a Soviet nuclear attack.

The agreement to cooperate on a reactor to produce electricity more efficiently came at the end of a conference last week between Russian and Chinese nuclear scientists. It was held in Chengdu in central China.

The conference debated nuclear waste disposal, which is a major problem in both countries, and more modern and secure nuclear plant designs and environmental safety, the news agency said.

China already has purchased from Russia a nuclear power plant that will operate in Liaoning province northeast of Beijing. On a visit to Beijing last year, Russian President Boris Yeltsin said his country would sell arms and nuclear power plants to China for cash.

Chinese authorities have denied several times that a considerable number of Russian nuclear scientists are in China after losing their jobs when Moscow cut its strategic weapons program. Informed sources have insisted that many of the Russian technicians were hired by the Chinese to help develop power plants, which Beijing sees as essential to solve an energy shortage caused by a rapidly developing economy.

New China did not elaborate on the duration of the joint project on the hybrid reactor, and it did not say when the 10 Russian scientists will arrive in China.

In a transposition of historic roles, cash-strapped Russia has become a potential client for Beijing's ambitions to modernize its armed forces with computerized equipment and more aerial punch. According to reliable reports, Beijing has ordered $1.2 billion worth of weaponry and technology from Russia.

Already Beijing has bought 27 Russian SU-24 fighter-bombers and is believed to have contracted for an aircraft carrier from Ukraine as part of its ambitions to become a naval power in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean.